But the Selfie Flash is the best thing to happen to the selfie since the “selfie stick,” which was arguably the standout product of 2014.

People are obsessed with taking the perfect self-portraits with their smartphones, but even as photo-editing apps improve, lighting continues to be the Achilles’ heel of the selfie. If you don’t have good lighting, you don’t have a good selfie, it’s as simple as that.

Lenovo clearly understood this issue and created the Selfie Flash, which plugs into your audio jack to give you the best lighting conditions for your selfies. It uses 8 LEDs to bring out your natural colour tones, even in low light conditions, according to the company. Most importantly, the Flash isn’t a “flash,” so you probably won’t blink; the light stays on so you can set everything up to look perfect before you take the shot.

The Flash is also rechargeable: Lenovo says it can take up to 100 selfies on a single charge, day or night.

There is one major downside: Lenovo says it currently has no plans to sell the Selfie Flash in the US, which is downright cruel. Hopefully Lenovo comes to its senses soon, lest it suffer other manufacturers knocking off this brilliant (pun intended) idea.

If it ever does come to the US, hopefully Lenovo can figure out how to make this work for phones that don’t have headphone jacks on top of the device — and hopefully it also remains at that magical $US29 price point.